Sick Day
by Daedaleopsis
Summary: When Penny discovers a startling secret about Sheldon, she realizes that she is only one who can help him in a time of crisis. Warning: major character death... and weirdness.
1. Chapter 1

Some stories have a life of their own. I was all set to work on some other stories (which are much further along) when this story came into my head and wouldn't leave me alone. It's a little weird, and rather sad, but it wanted to be written.

* * *

><p>Penny was lounging around her apartment, idly flipping through the pages of an old Cosmo magazine, when she got a call from her boyfriend.<p>

"Hey, Leonard, what's up?" she greeted him cheerfully.

"Hi, Penny. Hey, I hate to ask you to do this, but could you go check on Sheldon?"

"Check on Sheldon? What do you mean? He's not at work with you?"

"No, he's home sick... or at least, I think he's sick. I mean, that's what he said, but he's acting really weird."

"Come on, this is Sheldon we're talking about. Weird is normal for him. You're going to have to be a little more specific," she quipped.

"Okay, well, I haven't seen him at all since he told me he was sick. He's locked himself in his room, and every time I knock on his door, he says he's fine. But there's been no sneezing, no coughing, no requests for split pea soup with croutons... I don't know, it's pretty odd, even for Sheldon."

"Wait a minute, Leonard. How long has he been shut up in his room?" Penny demanded.

A long pause, then Leonard feebly offered, "Since... yesterday?"

"Ooh, you are such a jerk, Leonard Hofstadter! Is that any way to treat your friend when he's sick? What if he needs to go to the hospital? What if he's hurt?" Penny cried, feeling a surge of panic.

"Oh, come on, Penny, you know what he's like when he's sick," Leonard whined.

"Fine, but I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing it for him," Penny growled and hung up on him.

She pulled on a hoodie over her tank top and pajama pants and grabbed a half-full box of tissues from her bathroom before crossing the hallway to her friend's apartment. Trying the door knob, she found it unlocked. A quick scan of the living area revealed that Sheldon wasn't up and about. She made her way down the short corridor to the bedrooms and knocked on Sheldon's door.

"Sheldon, are you in there?"

There was silence for a moment, and then he answered her through the door.

"I'm fine, Penny. Please go away."

His voice, however, sounded weak, and Penny became more worried.

"Sheldon, something's wrong; I can tell. I'm not leaving until you tell me what's going on." Then in a softer tone, she added, "I'm your friend, sweetie. Whatever it is, I'll help you if I can."

There was another lengthy pause. Finally he replied, "The door is locked, Penny. I couldn't let you in, even if I wanted to."

"What do you mean? Why can't you open the door? Are you hurt?"

"I just... can't."

Cursing under her breath, Penny ran out into the boys' living room and rooted around in their desks until she found what she was looking for. It was a long, slender metal screwdriver that she had seen Leonard use when he was upgrading his computer. Tool in hand, she dashed back to the bedroom door and inserted it into the tiny hole in the center of the doorknob. With a few quick twists, she was in.

"I'm coming in, Sheldon," she warned. There was no response. She swung the door open, and froze as she caught sight of Sheldon. He was lying in bed in his usual "mummy" pose, and he looked blue-literally, a pale blue color, just a shade darker than skim milk. His skin also had an odd scaly look to it. She sat down on his bed, and carefully touched his hand. It was icy cold and had a peculiar rough texture.

"Sweetie, what's wrong? What happened to you?" Penny cried.

"I'm sick," he said, not meeting her gaze.

"No, no, no, I've seen you sick before. You sniffle and moan and act like a big baby. This is something else. This is... I don't know what it is, but it's scaring me."

"It was not my intention to frighten you, Penny, but I realized that I needed help, and you are the only one I trust. It was a simple matter to manipulate Leonard into avoiding me and calling you to come over here by letting him think I had a cold or some other common virus."

"So what's wrong with you?" Penny repeated, starting to feel really afraid.

"Nothing... and everything," he replied cryptically.

"I don't understand."

He sighed. "I have a story to tell you, Penny, and I don't know how you'll react to it. I don't know if you'll believe me. But of all my friends and acquaintances, I have calculated that you are the one person most likely to help me, regardless of whether or not you believe me."

His piercing blue eyes held hers fast in a look full of unfathomable nuance.

"I'm not human, Penny," he said softly. His eyes never left her face, gauging her reaction as he confessed his true story, the one that up until this moment, he had never shared with anyone.

"I was traveling, exploring space in this region of the galaxy, when my vessel crashed onto your planet almost twenty years ago. I wasn't able to rescue much of my equipment before the ship self-destructed, a fail-safe that activates in case of catastrophic disaster on an alien world. Technically, I was supposed to stay in my ship and be destroyed along with the rest of my equipment, but I was over-confident. I believed that I would be able to find a way to repair my communicator and contact my people, and then they would come and rescue me."

"My people have a talent for... mimicry, so I was able to alter my appearance to look human. I needed to understand your world, to learn how to blend in while I searched for a solution. That was when I met Sheldon Cooper. He was fourteen years old when I met him at Texas A&M University. He wanted to solve the secrets of the universe; I just wanted to find a way home. I was fascinated by his brilliant mind. Clearly, he was one of the most intelligent people on Earth. Initially, I hoped that I could persuade him to help me, but I soon realized that Sheldon had a secret of his own. He was terminally ill. His pathological obsession with his health had lead doctors to discover that he had a fatal genetic defect, but unfortunately, it was one for which there was no treatment or cure. He was often too weak to attend class, but his mind could still run circles around most of his undergraduate professors."

"So I took a risk and told him who I really was. Then I made him a deal. I agreed to tell him everything about my home planet and all the other planets I had visited, about space travel and technological and scientific advances. In return, he agreed to allow me to assume his identity after he was gone. It wasn't until later that I realized that he must have been relieved to not have to burden his mother and sister with the knowledge of his death. You see, his father had died just a few months before. He had chosen to become legally emancipated so his family wouldn't be informed about his illness. I didn't understand your culture well enough at the time to understand that his attitude was unusual, to say the least. Fortunately, his detached way of dealing with people suited my goals as well. I wouldn't need to spend a lot of time around his family, and as for friends, he had none. I found it simplest to take on his personality as well. His condescending arrogance kept most people away."

"After I became Sheldon, I spent years studying with the brightest minds on earth, focusing on particle physics, seeking for a way to return to the stars. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that your world is centuries, if not millennia, behind mine in technological advancements. So I moved here, to California, with the intention of doing nothing more than living out the rest of my days in relative comfort. You see, I had realized early on that several trace elements present on Earth are toxic to my kind, although it would take many years for the poisons to build up in my blood stream. When I arrived in Pasadena, I estimated that I had perhaps ten years left. I got an easy job, where I was expected to produce few actual results. The most complex mathematics that your scientists were using were elementary to me, so all I really had to do was to avoid attracting too much notice. That's why whenever I seemed on the verge of a scientific breakthrough, it somehow fell apart. I sabotaged my own career - if you could call it that - so I wouldn't draw attention to myself."

"I've only made two real mistakes since I came here. One was to think that I could find a way off this planet by myself. I suppose I should have just stayed with my ship and self-destructed all those years ago. The other mistake I made was not realizing how quickly I would become debilitated once the toxins in my blood reached critical levels. I can't get up now. My body has become feeble, and I have very limited mobility. That's why I needed your help. I can't afford to trust any of my other friends. I think their passion for science would outweigh their friendship for me, and they wouldn't be able to keep my secret."

He raised his head a few inches off the pillow so he could look her more directly in the eye.

"Penny, when I die, I need you to destroy my body and the few pieces of equipment that I kept. Please, Penny, you must do this for me."

Her eyes had never left his face as he told his unbelievable story. As he finished speaking, she found herself shaking her head, not to deny his request, but just because she couldn't process what he was telling her. If she hadn't seen the weird physical changes that had come over his body, she would think this was a very strange practical joke. In fact, a corner of her mind was still hoping that he would smile and proclaim, "Bazinga!" But as she looked into his eyes, she could read the truth there. She drew in a shaky breath and stood up.

"Sheldon..." She paused. He wasn't really even Sheldon, was he? Well, she didn't know what else to call him, so she began again.

"Sheldon, I need time to think, to process things... I have to go."

With an effort, he reached out and weakly grasped her hand. "Please, don't leave me."

She looked down at his hand, pale blue and scaly, and experienced a moment of complete mindless panic. She jerked her hand away, but as she looked back at his face, she saw her friend, the one she had known for so many years. "I'll be just outside the door," she promised him and left the room quickly.


	2. Chapter 2

Out in the hallway, she sank to the floor, trembling. Her mind raced, and try as she might, she couldn't make any sense of all the thoughts and emotions flooding through her. She clapped a hand over her mouth as she began to sob. She wasn't even sure which emotions were the ones that made her cry; she just knew that she had to let them run their course for a while.

After a few minutes, she felt a little calmer. She went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. As she stared at her reflection in the mirror, she had a conversation with her inner self.

**Okay, Penny, what are you going to do now?**

_Sheldon needs my help. You know why he doesn't trust the others._

**Oh, you mean the friends who call him an emotionless robot? The girlfriend who forms emotional attachments to her monkeys and then kills them and studies their brains under a microscope? Yeah, no surprise there...**

_Sheldon's... an alien. That's not even his real name. I can't... I can't deal with that. I don't know how to deal with that._

**So don't. You're an actress. Take those feelings and put them in a box. You can deal with them later. Right now, Sheldon needs your help.**

_You're right. I can do this. _

Penny formed a mental image of a cardboard box. She imagined placing all her panic and bewilderment inside the box, then she imagined firmly shutting up the box. For good measure, she taped it all around with packing tape.

**There, feel better? **

_Sure, now I just have to deal with the fact that my best friend is dying._

**You can do this, Penny. He trusts you. He needs you. Have faith.**

That seemed to be the last thing her inner voice had to say to her, so she took a deep breath, squeezed her hands into fists and then relaxed them to release some of the tension she felt. She squared her shoulders and went back into Sheldon's room.

His gaze flew to her face the moment he heard the door knob turn.

"You're back," he murmured with a sigh of relief.

"Yeah, sweetie, I'm back." She sat down on the side of the bed again and held his hand in both of hers. She stroked the knobby protuberances along his skin and deliberately thought only of the man she knew as her friend.

"So, Sheldon, I know you well enough to know that you must have made some kind of plan. What do you need me to do?"

He gave her a faint smile. "Open my closet and look inside the third duffle bag on the floor. You should find a key with a large white tag attached. The key opens a unit in a nearby storage facility. I need you to go empty out the storage unit. There's not much there. Oh, and text Leonard. Tell him I have a cold and that you're going to go get me some soup or medicine. That will ensure that he doesn't return early."

Penny watched his face twitch with the usual tics as he asked her to lie for him. She wondered... no, she didn't wonder. That would mean opening that mental box that she knew she didn't have the capacity to handle right now.

"Will you be all right while I'm gone? I... I didn't even ask; are you... in pain? Can I bring you any painkillers or anything?"

"No, I'm not in pain, only weak... and drugs have always had unpredictable results with me." He laughed his breathy little laugh. Penny's heart caught in her throat as she remembered him racing around the apartment, high on caffeine and thinking he was the Flash. She swallowed painfully and looked away.

**You can do this, Penny.**

She got up and rummaged in the closet until she found the bag and the key Sheldon had indicated. There was no address on the label, just a number. Sheldon was too paranoid to write down the location of the storage facility, but he recited the address and had her repeat it until he was satisfied that she wouldn't forget.

She left his apartment in a daze. She drove to the storage facility, carefully thinking only about the traffic and the songs she was listening to on the radio. She found the right unit, a small outdoor space with a white roll-up metal door. The key fit in the large utilitarian padlock, although she had a hard time turning the key because the padlock seemed to be a bit rusty.

As she pushed up the door and stepped inside the darkened space, she blinked in surprise. The unit was empty. Just as she began to wonder what on earth she was going to tell Sheldon, she felt a faint prickling along her skin, and there was a low thrumming noise, so low it was almost felt rather than heard. She blinked, and suddenly there was a box sitting on the concrete floor in front of her. She bent down and touched it cautiously. It was just an ordinary cardboard box, large enough to be bulky and awkward to carry, but not heavy. She picked it up and placed it in the trunk of her car, which was parked just outside. On the drive home, she kept the radio turned off and thought about nothing.

When she returned to Sheldon, he instructed her to retrieve another one of the duffle bags from his closet. Pungent and exotic odors wafted up to tickle her nose as she opened the bag. It was full of amber glass jars and vials, along with a few cloth sacks and some tiny containers that looked like trinket boxes. They were marked with crinkly paper labels, handwritten in a number of languages.

"Holy crap on a cracker, Sheldon. What is all this stuff?"

He laughed his breathy laugh again. "When I began to give up hope that I would be able to mend my communicator, I spent a few years trying to find some substance that would counteract my blood poisoning. My colleagues thought I was suffering some kind of early mid-life crisis at the age of twenty. I even earned a master of arts in alternative medicine. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful in finding a cure. However, through careful experimentation, I was able to identify a number of substances that had a salubrious effect. One of those ingredients will give me the energy I need to be able to make it down four flights of stairs to your car."

She found the bottle he described, a fat glass jar with something shriveled and gray inside. She helped him put a piece of it under his tongue and then wiped the gray powder off on her pajama pants with a grimace.

"The medicine should take effect in about a half-hour," he told her, and then hesitated. "Penny, I... I would appreciate it if someone were with me at the end. I always imagined that I would want to be alone to contemplate my life, but I am surprised to find I have somehow changed my mind."

She managed to crack a smile at that. There was the Sheldon she knew, surprised by the idea that he might actually want company. Then she remembered why he wanted her to be there, and her face fell.

"I will," she promised, biting her lip to keep from crying again. "I... I need you to tell me exactly what you want me to do."

He nodded, seeming able to move a bit more easily this time. Hopefully, the medicine or whatever-the-hell-it-was that he had taken was starting to work. He told her that they needed to go out into the desert, somewhere very remote. There were a few places he had selected and marked on a map in one of the duffle bags.

"So basically, we're going on a camping trip, except only one of us is coming back," she said with a little catch in her voice.

He hesitated, and then changed the subject. "I'm looking forward to going to the desert in more ways than one. It's always been so cold here on your world."

"Is that why you're always wearing a thermal T-shirt, even in the middle of summer?" Penny asked curiously.

He nodded shyly. "It's strange to be speaking of this so openly with you. In a way, I wish I had been able to do this years ago."

She looked away, blinking rapidly, and when she had her emotions under control, she looked back to him again.

He just looked at her with wide eyes, and then he carefully pushed himself into a sitting position, wincing as he did so, despite his claim that he wasn't in any pain. "I think I'll be able to walk downstairs soon. Please go pack your things now," he said.

She nodded, and crossed the landing to her apartment. She stopped for a moment in front of her door and stared at it. Had it really been just a few hours ago that she had blithely walked out that door, expecting to get soup for Sheldon and sing him "Soft Kitty"? She forced herself to extend her arm, to open the door and walk through it. In her bedroom, she blindly threw clothes, undergarments and toiletries into the large black duffle bag that Sheldon had given her. There had been an extra one, sitting empty on his closet floor, and she couldn't bring herself to ask if he had planned for this contingency, too.

It took only a few minutes to load up her trunk with the duffle bags—four now, with hers added to the pile. She took a deep breath, preparing herself for the next difficult part, getting Sheldon from his bedroom to her car parked on the street below.

Sheldon moved like an old man as she helped him down the stairs. His joints were stiff, and he leaned on her heavily, despite the drugs he had taken. A different substance, a viscous brown liquid, had restored his appearance. She gazed at him, thinking that he had always been so pale. How had she not noticed the blue undertones in his skin before? Maybe she had but never thought much of it.

By the time Sheldon reached her car and folded his long limbs into the passenger seat, he looked exhausted. Penny retrieved the map from the second duffle bag (she had hastily labeled them with post-it notes so she could tell them apart). Underneath the map was a thick envelope. Curious, Penny peeked inside and her eyes widened at the neat stack of crisp bills in different denominations. From the number of hundreds and fifties, she guessed there was more than a few thousand dollars. Bleakly, she wondered how well she really knew Sheldon, and how much of his life had been a lie.

She got behind the wheel and headed for Route 15, the freeway that would carry them east toward the desert. After a few miles, she glanced over at Sheldon. He was still awake, so she asked him curiously, "Aren't you going to tell me that my check engine light is on?"

He shook his head slowly. "It is irrelevant now. Before, my concern was of getting into a serious accident. I couldn't risk having my blood tested or undergoing any invasive medical procedures."

She stared straight ahead, fighting back the urge to cry, to yell at him. It was too much for her to process. She kept picturing the cardboard box image in her mind, imagined shoving all of her panic and helplessness inside.

They stopped once at a sporting goods store. Penny purchased an extra tent and sleeping bag for herself, along with several cases of water and a few other supplies. Sheldon had opted to remain in the car. After she had finished loading up her purchases, she got back behind the driver's seat. Glancing over at Sheldon, she commented warily, "You're turning blue again."

He nodded. "The pharmaceuticals I used to maintain my appearance are wearing off. They don't last long."

She frowned in confusion. "You couldn't have been taking that stuff every few hours your whole life."

"No, most of the compounds I use only enhance my body's natural abilities. The herb I used in the Arctic, for example, accelerated my metabolism. On my world, it would have been a prohibited substance, because it would have shortened my lifespan by decades. It didn't matter, though; they were decades I knew I would never see anyway if I didn't find a cure."

"Is that why you went to the Arctic? I always thought that you were really focused on the Nobel, but you said you couldn't attract attention by making any real scientific discoveries."

"Yes. There was a rare microbe that existed in sub-zero environments which I hoped to cultivate in an effort to purge the toxins from my blood. It was my last real hope, and one which I was reluctant to attempt because I knew the toll the expedition would take on my health. Ironically, it was the knowledge that my last-ditch effort to find a cure had failed that sent me into a deep depression, not Leonard's childish prank. I knew before I set out that my search for monopoles at the magnetic north pole would be unsuccessful. My people have known for centuries that monopoles aren't related to string theory in the way that I suggested."

They were silent for several minutes, and then Sheldon spoke again. "There's something you should know. In the third duffle bag is a round black device about ten centimeters in diameter... the size of a saucer," he clarified, seeing Penny's blank look. "It has four small depressions on its surface. It's another contingency. No one can see me like this. If we are discovered, I want you to hold the buttons for a count of five, and then you drop it and run. Understand?"

"What... what will it do?" Penny asked in a hoarse whisper.

A ghost of a smile flexed the corners of his mouth. "What I should have done when I first came here. It's a bomb of sorts, for lack of a better term. It will destroy anything in about a sixty meter radius. None of my equipment, none of my technology, can ever be discovered—or, to employ an over-used cliché—fall into the wrong hands. Press the buttons, count to five, and run."

Penny nodded and swallowed hard against the lump in her throat.


	3. Chapter 3

After a few hours of driving, Penny turned off the highway onto a two-lane road. At the end of the road, there was a dirt track that led out across the rocky plain strewn with creosote bushes and joshua trees. Penny was forced to drive at a crawl since the track was rough and full of potholes. Eventually, Sheldon, who was monitoring their trek on a handheld GPS device, said "Here," and Penny pulled off the path.

She set up their campsite near a small stand of joshua trees, behind an outcropping of rock which hid their camp from the path. Sheldon was still in the car. She was going to roll down the windows and park the car in the shade, but he had begged her not to. She finally gave in, leaving the windows open just an inch or so. Sometime in the hour it took her to pitch the tents and gather wood for a fire, Sheldon had fallen asleep. When she opened the trunk of the car to take out their supplies, waves of super-heated air escaped, shimmering like magic before her eyes. She had no idea how he could possibly be comfortable in the oven-like temperatures.

Circling the car, she peered in through the window. It looked like his drugs had worn off completely. His skin had returned to a very pale, ice-blue color. His nose was almost flush with his face, with a ridge running up the center, dividing his forehead in two before disappearing into his hair. His hair was now a blue-black color. Perhaps hair wasn't even the right term for it, because it was wide and flattened like a blade of grass. On either side of his head were vertical ridges that she could only assume were his ears. His mouth almost looked human though, a little wider than before and shaded more into the purple spectrum. Penny stared at the lozenge-shaped bumps that covered his skin, tiny around his eyes and mouth and growing larger on his cheeks and neck. His forearms also had the scales (or whatever they were) in a pattern that made her think of crocodile skin. He still had hands with five fingers but no fingernails, and the first two fingers and thumb were elongated.

Time to unpack that box, Penny thought to herself. She sat down in the meager shade of a joshua tree with a bottle of water and let all the emotions of the day come crashing down upon her. She realized, as she sorted through the feelings she had been suppressing, that her initial fear of Sheldon's differences had morphed into a feeling of loss. She felt like she didn't really know him. While she would have done almost anything for her friend Sheldon, this was someone else. She was angry now; how dare he lie to her all these years and then trade on a sense of false obligation? She got up and paced, despite the heat. She kicked at a rock and sent it skittering over the gravel-laden terrain. It wasn't enough.

Suddenly, she was running, away from everything, dodging boulders and ignoring the stinging slashes of yucca leaves against her bare shins. She pushed herself harder, going faster and faster until she couldn't feel her legs any more and she felt like she was flying. Then her toe caught on a rock, and she went flying toward the ground, narrowly missing hitting her head on a rock. She lay on the sandy dirt, panting and feeling the ache of new bruises and the throbbing sting in the heels of her hands where she thrust them out to break her fall. After a moment, she sat up and brushed the dust off of her shorts, feeling chagrined that she had almost hurt herself when Sheldon needed her so much. It was odd, but she felt as if both the sprint and the fall had done her good. With a renewed sense of clarity, she picked her way back through the desert plain.

He was awake when she returned, although he was lazing in the intense heat inside her shut-up car like a cat in a patch of sunlight. With a smirk, she thought that he had a similar look of smug satisfaction on his face.

"Are you all right, Penny?" he asked, opening the door after taking in her scratched and bleeding shins and dirty clothes.

"Am I all right? Sheldon, how can you ask that? You're the one that's..." She broke off, unable to finish her sentence.

"The one that's dying. You can say it. It's the truth, whether or not you speak it aloud," he replied.

She didn't answer, but helped him out of the car and made him as comfortable as she could, settling him into a camp chair. She tried to get him to eat or drink something, but he refused. It worried her, so she argued with him until he gave in. She had the sneaking suspicion that he only capitulated because he was too tired to fight with her anymore.

Penny stared off toward the horizon. She didn't check the time, but she knew it was well past noon. In a few hours, Leonard would be getting home to his apartment, expecting Sheldon to be resting in bed. Would he look in on his roommate? Penny's stomach twisted in knots as she realized what had to be done.

"Sheldon, we have to call Leonard. We have to tell him... I mean, everyone." Her voice cracked, and she took another swig from her water bottle before continuing. "If you're sure about this... if you're sure you won't be going back, then you have to let them know."

"I've already told you, they can't see me like this," Sheldon said quietly.

"Yeah, well, nothing's stopping you from talking to them on the phone. You need to say goodbye to them. You can't just disappear from their lives without a word," Penny countered crossly.

"Actually, I find that preferable. If I attempt to contact them, there will be shouting and crying and all sort of unpleasantness. I am choosing to avoid all of that."

"What? No! No, Sheldon, you can't. How do you think they are going to feel if you don't say goodbye to them? They're your friends, and they care about you."

"I don't want to talk to them," he insisted stubbornly.

She crossed her arms and scowled down at him. "Don't make me go all junior rodeo on you."

"I don't know what I would say," he answered, looking away uncomfortably.

She blew out a breath. "Okay, now we're actually getting somewhere," she said, running a hand through her hair. She crouched down by his camp chair, looking up into his face. "Why don't you practice what you want to say with me? I wouldn't normally suggest such a thing. I mean, I kind of feel like your last words to them should be private, but in your case... I'm sorry, Sheldon, but your people skills suck."

"All right," he said after a long pause. "Well, will this do? 'Hello, Leonard, I regret to inform you that..."

"Ugh, no! Stop!" she cried. "This isn't a form letter, Sheldon! This isn't working. I think... I think it would be better if I break the news to them first. You're right about the screaming and crying. I think you just need to focus on what you really want to say to them. If they have to be mad at someone, they can be mad at me instead."

He nodded thoughtfully and began again. "Hello, Leonard. I assume you've heard the unfortunate turn of events which has befallen me. I hereby bequeath to you all of my comic books-"

Penny groaned loudly and dropped her head into her hands. "You really suck at this, Sheldon. Okay, just... just tell me how you feel about Leonard, and I'll tell you what words to use."

He looked at her curiously, head tilted to the side in a bird-like fashion. "Why would my last words to them be about my feelings? Feelings are ephemeral; they are completely lacking in consistency and coherency, and they have no bearing on the real world."

She felt her throat tighten as she protested, "Sweetie, feelings are everything. Our emotions are at the root of everything we think and say and do. Come on, just tell me how you feel about Leonard. He's your best friend, right?" she suggested.

"I... suppose."

Penny ground her teeth in frustration. Why the hell was he being so difficult? "What do you mean, you suppose?" she spat out.

"Really, Penny, I thought it would be obvious that in many ways, I consider you a better friend than Leonard," he snapped with a hint of his old ire. "Leonard doesn't help me when I am sick, he's not my preferred partner in Halo, and he's not the one I entrusted with my secret."

She stared at him open-mouthed for a moment. Then she went over and ruffled his stiff hair and kissed his smooth, cool cheek. "Sweetie, you are one giant pain in the ass, and I love you too," she whispered with a grin.

He looked startled. "I didn't say I loved you," he protested.

"Yeah, actually, you sorta did. That's why you have to say these things to your friends, because they are your friends. Even if you can't say you love them, when you tell them how you feel, what they mean to you, that's what they'll hear."

"Oh," he said wonderingly. "Is that how it works?"

"Whackadoodle. All right, let's start again. 'Leonard, you've been my best friend for years'..." she prompted.

"You drive me places-"

"You've always been there for me," she revised.

"You make sure my food orders are correct."

"You showed me that you cared by all the little things you did for me."

And so it went. Penny took Sheldon's factual statements and helped him decipher the emotions behind each of them. With her assistance, he crafted a message for Raj to have confidence and to follow his heart. The message for Howard was that he respected him and admired his choices, especially in starting a new life together with Bernadette. To Bernadette, he encouraged her to continue to see the best in Howard and thanked her for bringing Lovey, who had been his pet bird for a brief time, into his life.

Finally, it was time to decide what to say to Amy.

"This is gonna be tricky," Penny said. "I'm pretty sure she's gonna say she loves you. If she does, you have to say it back and sound like you mean it. Also, she's the one who's going to be the most hurt that I'm here with you, and she's not. You should tell her that you didn't want her to suffer watching you..." Penny's voice broke and she turned away.

"Penny-" Sheldon began.

"I... I just need a minute. Just give me a minute," she choked out, wandering blurry-eyed a few feet away. She fought hard to control her tears, but it was a battle she couldn't win.

"Penny, please come back," he called softly.

She couldn't resist his gentle request and walked back to him with tears streaming down her face.

"I deeply regret causing you this pain," he said sincerely. "I would give you a hug if I could."

She knelt in front of his camping chair and wrapped her arms carefully around his torso, laying her head on his leg.

"Don't," she whispered fiercely. "Don't regret it. I'm hurting because I care about you, because I don't want to lose you. But I'm not sorry about the way I feel, because I don't regret one minute of having you in my life."


	4. Chapter 4

_Note: I forgot to mention this earlier, but this story fits most comfortably somewhere in late season 5 or early season 6. Penny is dating Leonard & Sheldon is dating Amy._

* * *

><p>It was early evening when Penny made the first phone call. The temperature had dropped into the mid-seventies, and Sheldon had started shivering and looking miserable again. So she bundled him up, using his unzipped sleeping bag as a blanket. After making him as comfortable as she could, she walked a short distance away for privacy.<p>

Leonard answered his cell phone on the second ring. "Penny, hi! I was just about to call you!"

"It's okay, Leonard. Where... where are you?"

"Oh, umm, Howard and I are at Raj's place. We're about to watch the director's cut of _Avatar_. Wanna come and join us? Raj made appletinis."

"Uh, look, Leonard, I need you to step out into the hallway."

"What?"

"Step outside Raj's apartment, out into the hallway. I have something important to tell you."

"Okaaay... what's up?" he asked, sounding concerned. He did as she requested and stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

"Sheldon's... not well," she began.

"Oh, Sheldon, right... is he really sick? Does he want to go to the hospital, because I can come over and drive you there."

"No, Leonard, just listen." Penny launched into the story that she and Sheldon had worked out together. She told him that Sheldon's last MRI had shown a suspicious mass, which further tests revealed to be an aggressive and inoperable brain tumor.

"Oh my god," Leonard said faintly. "Does he need chemo? Radiation? What are his treatment options? Who's his oncologist?"

"The first doctor told him he had six weeks. The second doctor he consulted gave him a month. And that was... that was six weeks ago."

"What are you saying?" Leonard demanded, horrified.

"He's in a hospice. He... it's not good," she said, pain bleeding into her voice. "He doesn't have a lot of time left."

Leonard's knees buckled, and he slid down the wall until he crumpled onto the floor. "I don't understand. Why didn't he say anything? Why didn't he tell me? He didn't even look sick two days ago. How can he be-"

Penny thought of scaly blue skin and hair that wasn't hair, and said, "He doesn't want anyone to see him this way. He wants you to remember him the way he was."

Leonard took a few seconds to process this information. "That's ridiculous," he snapped. "I'm his best friend. I'm coming over right now. Where are you? Give me the address, and I'll be right there."

"No, Leonard," she said sadly, knowing he wouldn't understand. "He has his reasons, and I'm going to support him on this. No visitors. It's his last wish, and you need to respect it."

They argued for a while longer, but Penny held firm. She knew how much her words wounded Leonard, and she hated it, but she refused to betray Sheldon's trust. Eventually, Leonard hung up on her. Penny stood there for a moment, biting her lip and thinking. Then she turned on her heel and strode back to the campsite to ask Sheldon how to deactivate the GPS in her cell phone.

* * *

><p>Howard and Raj had heard the yelling out in the hallway, but they couldn't quite make out the words, even with their ears pressed to the apartment door. When they heard a sudden silence punctuated by angry footfalls, they scrambled to arrange themselves on the sofa in casual positions as if they hadn't been eavesdropping.<p>

Raj took one look at Leonard's face and assumed the worst. "Dude, did Penny dump you?"

In his agitation, Leonard blurted the whole tragic tale out, heedless of how his friends might handle the news.

"So Penny just called you up out of the blue and told you Sheldon's _dying_? If this is some kind of sick joke, it isn't funny," Howard murmured. His face was drained of color, and he kept tugging at his dickie as if it were strangling him.

Raj kept repeating, "Oh my cow." He pulled a flask out of his vest pocket and desperately guzzled the contents. Leonard paced around the room, yanking at his curls with both hands as if it would help him to process the impossible.

"I have to call Bernadette," Howard said suddenly. "She's out with Amy... oh, hell. Does Amy know?"

* * *

><p>Penny had dreaded calling Amy. It only made matters worse that she was out at a bar with Bernie, instead of receiving such awful news in privacy. Amy was completely distraught, and begged her to tell where she and Sheldon were, until both girls were sobbing. Bernadette grabbed the phone after that, and when she heard the news, she went ballistic. Every single person in the bar could hear her, even over the booming bass of the dance music. About half of the patrons walked out, looking extremely discomfitted.<p>

After several minutes of listening to Bernie's ear-piercing lecture, Penny finally got a word in edgewise. When she told Bernie that Sheldon wanted to speak with each of them to say his goodbyes, the tiny blonde was finally silent for a long moment.

"When?" Bernadette asked tersely.

Penny glanced over toward the campsite. It was growing dark, and she needed to go check on Sheldon. "Tomorrow. He needs to rest. I'll let you know when he's up to it."

When she returned to the camp, she found Sheldon shivering. The temperature had dropped several more degrees, and his inability to keep warm was worrisome. Penny quickly busied herself lighting the fire she had laid earlier in the day. She inflated one of the air mattresses and positioned it as close to the blaze as she dared, then eased Sheldon from the chair to the mattress. She offered him some water, which he refused, saying it was too cold, so she set a few bottles of water and a pre-packaged meal next to the fire to warm up.

He ate little and drank even less. She didn't know whether she should coax him to eat more. She certainly didn't feel hungry either, but she choked something down for his sake. The sun was almost set, and they watched it disappear below the horizon.

"Do you want to sleep now?" she asked.

He nodded wearily, and so she tucked him into his improvised bed by the fire. For a while, she just sat there, staring at the fire and watching him sleep. His face still had that pinched look, taut with exhaustion or pain. Finally, she decided that she should go to bed too. She crept into her tent and wondered if she could fall asleep. She felt completely ennervated, and tomorrow was likely to be just as bad, if not worse.

* * *

><p>Penny woke sometime in the middle of the night. She bumped her head on a curved support pole of her tiny tent as she sat up, disoriented. The stress of yesterday rushed back and she pressed her hands to her face, trying to adjust to the weight upon her soul. After a moment, she raised her head. She could fall apart later. Right now, Sheldon needed her. She crawled out of the tent and looked around. The fire had died down, and there was only a faint glow coming from the red embers. She thought she saw movement, and as she crept closer, she heard a strange noise coming from Sheldon's air mattress. It took a few seconds for her to realize that the sound was his teeth chattering. With an inarticulate cry, she rushed over and knelt down beside him. His forehead, when she laid the back of her hand against it, felt icy. She honestly didn't know how he could survive being that cold.<p>

"Don't worry, sweetie, I'm here. It'll be okay," she murmured, but she was scared.

Quickly, she added some kindling to the fire and stirred up the embers. It wasn't long before a few tongues of flame licked up. She added the rest of the firewood, staring mournfully at the empty packaging. That was the last of the wood she had bought at the sporting goods store. If they needed a fire tomorrow, she'd have to find a way to get more wood somehow.

Turning back to Sheldon, she touched his face briefly. His body temperature still seemed dangerously low. She stared back at her tent for a moment before making up her mind.

_Sheldon's not going to like this_, she thought as she fetched her sleeping bag and zipped it open into a large rectangle. She made her way back toward his air mattress, tripping once over the folds of her improvised blanket as it dragged on the ground. First, she laid the doubled-up sleeping bag on top of his prone and still-shivering form. Then she knelt down beside him.

"Sheldon, can you hear me?" she asked. No response.

"I'm going to join our sleeping bags together. I know you don't like to be touched, but I can't think of a better way to keep you warm. So I'm just going to be right next to you, okay?"

He may have nodded, or it might have been just another spasm. She quickly unzipped his sleeping bag, doing her best to keep the layers as close to each other as possible, although she doubted that there was any residual body heat trapped inside. She finished joining the two bags together as quickly as she could, hyper-aware of exposing any part of Sheldon's body to the cool night air. Then she slipped inside the doubled sleep sack, curling her body around his and putting one leg over his. She was careful to keep his body turned toward the fire, which was now crackling merrily. The cold seeped into her limbs as she wrapped herself around him. It was like hugging a marble statue. She rubbed his arms and back, and after what seemed like an eternity, he stopped shivering. At some point much later, she drifted back to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

Penny woke just as the sky was beginning to turn a soft gray towards the east. The moon hung low over distant mountains. She wondered if Sheldon was awake. He still felt a little cool, but nothing near the frigidness of the previous night.

"Penny?" he asked quietly, in a near-whisper.

"Yeah, sweetie, I'm right here."

"You're in my sleeping bag. People can't be in my sleeping bag."

She laughed. She couldn't help it. For a moment, he sounded just like the old Sheldon, the one who fussed about everything. She stopped as she thought that she would give anything to have that old Sheldon back, the one whom she thought she would always have in her life.

"The fire went out last night. You were freezing cold, and you wouldn't stop shivering. I was so worried. I needed to find a way to keep you warm."

"There are some instant heat hand-warmer packets in one of the duffle bags," he said, then after a thoughtful pause, added, "But I like this better."

"Really?" she asked incredulously.

"Being touched always made it more difficult for me to maintain my appearance. It has something to do with the bioelectrical differentials... Anyway, although I was never interested in sexual intimacy with a human, I did occasionally miss a simple touch, like a hug. Now that I don't need to expend the effort to look human, I find it comforting."

Penny smiled. "Well, we don't have anything else planned for today," she quipped.

After a moment, Sheldon spoke up again. "Penny, I'm still cold."

"Okay, do you want me to go get those hand warmer thingies?"

"No, can you just come around the other side of me?"

This was getting weirder and weirder, but Penny agreed. It took some maneuvering, and in the end, she just wiggled out of the sleeping bag and wormed her way into the small space in front of Sheldon, dragging the excess material over to her side. Now she was lying facing him. She waited as he looked at her face carefully.

"Better?" she asked.

"Better," he answered, nestling his head against her shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him and soon both were asleep again.

Penny woke perhaps an hour later. It was still chilly, but the sun was climbing in the sky. She needed to get up and take care of certain personal matters. She wriggled out of the sleeping bag again. Sheldon's eyes were closed and he looked peaceful. She smiled sadly at how relaxed he seemed. After pulling on clean clothes, she plugged her cell phone into the car charger, since the phone's battery had died sometime during the night. As it powered up again, she saw that she had a lot of missed calls and text messages from her friends. Scrolling through them, it was clear that her friends were angry and confused. She couldn't blame them; it was easier to lash out in anger than to confront the pain of losing someone you loved.

When she returned, Sheldon was awake and apparently waiting for her. He waited until she had resumed her place next to him before he began speaking.

"You talked about loss earlier," he said quietly. "My people have a ritual, a process which ameliorates the pain of separation. It allows us to share our lives, our memories, with a chosen participant. That person could be a friend, a family member, a mate, or just someone who has been influential in your life. When the boy Sheldon was dying, I performed the ritual with him, although I admit I was motivated by self-preservation. I needed his memories in order to assume his identity. However, I discovered that your biology, while compatible with mine, processed the transfer in an unexpected way. I think I absorbed some of his personality, his way of viewing life, as well as his memories."

He was silent for such a long time that Penny glanced over, thinking that he had fallen asleep.

"On my world, it is a measure of respect, of... affection, to ask someone to share your memories. I was never asked to do so by any of my own kind. I suppose I have always held myself apart from others, even in a world where society is governed by exacting rules of behavior. It's how my people function; there is a rule for every situation, and we always follow the rules. You could not know to ask, so I must break with tradition and offer you this opportunity. Would you receive my memories, Penny?"

Her throat constricted, but before she could even begin to respond, he began speaking again.

"When I attempted it with the boy Sheldon, I was left with an imprint of his feelings as well as some of his memories. It seems that the human brain is driven by emotion far more than most of you would care to admit. I don't know how the process would work in reverse. Your mind is less evolved and less organized than mine. That's not an insult, just a statement of fact," he added quickly. "I don't think it would harm you, but the results may be... disconcerting. You may struggle to process the memories in a logical fashion. I just wanted to warn you of potential side effects."

Penny gave him a little squeeze, and said, "Shut up, sweetie. Of course, I'll take your memories. I'd be honored to have them."

He was silent for a moment, then said, "There was a time when I thought it might be Leonard here. I understand the way his mind works; he is more rational. Perhaps you... you humans have been a bad influence on me. I find that I actually prefer the presence of someone who has an emotional attachment to me."

She frowned at him. "Leonard has an emotional attachment to you, too."

He glanced away. "It's different," was all he had to say. After a moment, he met her gaze again. "There is a ceremony to accompany the memory transfer. Are you ready?"

She nodded, feeling a little nervous. He reached out and placed splayed fingers on either side of her head, near her temples.

"I give you my memories that I might not be forgotten. I grant you my soul that I might live on in you. Receive in humility what is given in gratitude. You of me, and I of you," he intoned.

In a few moments, Penny found herself blinking at Sheldon, uncertain of what had just happened or how much time had passed. "Did it work?" she asked.

"Time will tell," he replied cryptically.

As the morning light began to beat down on them, Penny had to abandon the sleeping bag before she suffered heat stroke.

In a low voice, he said, "Penny, I don't think I can survive another cold night like last night. I want you to bring me the vial of the gray leaves."

She rummaged through the duffel bag until she found it again. "Sheldon, isn't this the stuff that burns up your metabolism?"

"That's not exactly how it works, but your description will suffice. Please give me three of the leaves," he replied.

She frowned. "Last time, you only used a piece of one of these leaves. Sheldon, I can't let you take so much. It'll kill you."

He laughed, but it sounded more like a cough. "Penny, I can have a few good hours left in which I will feel alert and relatively free of pain, or I can linger for days in a deteriorating state, during which I would be fortunate to be unconscious. I choose the former."

After a long pause, she bit her lip, swallowed hard against the lump in her throat, and agreed. As the drug began to take effect, Sheldon felt a little stronger. He would have tried to sit up, but Penny objected.

"Just talk to me, if you can," she begged. She spread her sleeping bag on the ground next to his and lay down on top of it. As the sun climbed higher in the sky, she listened to Sheldon tell about his home, his people, places he had seen in his travels and his musings about the universe. His words awakened chords of sympathetic memory in her. She remembered the nameless world with the frozen methane clouds, where the crust of the ground was diamonds. As he talked about the survey of the double-ringed gas giant, she saw the planet in her mind and murmured that the rings were beautiful. She could have listened to him for days on end instead of mere hours. The sun was almost directly overhead when Sheldon began to falter. Unbidden, she pulled out the glass jar and gave him the last of the gray leaves.

"It's time," she said quietly, holding her cell phone out to him. He understood and took it from her with a brief nod. She wanted to walk away to give him the privacy to say his goodbyes, but he was so weak that he needed her to hold the phone. She settled for staring out at the distant mountains, tears that she could no longer hold back streaming down her face.

At last, he had finished, his final words delivered to an unwilling and disbelieving audience. "Not... long now," he whispered, beginning to shiver. Penny couldn't imagine how he could be cold in the fierce desert heat, but she piled her sleeping bag on top of his. Lying next to him on the burning sand, she sang "Soft Kitty" to him one last time. Then she switched to another song, one from another world. She now understood how badly her human tongue mangled the alien words. His breathing became ragged and sporadic. With tears streaming down her face, she whispered his name—his real name—into his ear as she held his head in her lap. A long shuddering sigh, and then silence. As she watched, the color leached from his scales, turning them a dull pewter gray. He was gone.

She bent over his body and was finally able to release her grief in great racking sobs. How long she stayed like that, she couldn't tell. Eventually, she ran out of tears. She wiped her eyes and carefully laid Sheldon out as if he were sleeping peacefully, smoothing his hair. The last thing she did was to press a tender kiss to his forehead.

The sun hung low on the horizon, a blood-red eye glaring sullenly at her, as she began the grim task of containment. All of his clothing and personal items were stacked next to his body. The bag full of exotic medicines went on top. Penny opened the third duffle bag and was surprised to find a hand gun, ammunition and coils of rope. She debated keeping the gun; after all, she knew how to shoot. But it occurred to her that possessing an unregistered weapon could potentially create trouble. She frowned at that errant thought; it wasn't really like her to be that cautious. So that duffle bag joined the others, along with the sleeping bags. Feeling slightly paranoid, she added the rest of the camping gear to the heap. The old Penny would have put everything onto the pile. This new logical side of her urged her to put the money aside. She thought she might use it later to do something Sheldon would have liked, like fund some sort of physics grant.

Her throat tightened as she added the final item to the pile: the bulky cardboard box she had retrieved from Sheldon's storage unit. She stepped back, absorbing the scene into her memory, detritus from a life ended too soon. She couldn't see his body from this angle, and thought perhaps that was for the best. There was only one thing left, the black device that she was holding in her hands. She stood for a long moment, steeling her courage for what had to come next. When she was ready, she pressed her fingers against the indentations. Counted to five. Dropped it on top of the collected mass, and sprinted towards the safety of her car.

A deep concussive _whump_ yanked her off of her feet. Dazed, she picked herself up off the ground, brushing gravel from her hands. As she turned around, she saw that she had landed on the very edge of a crater in the sand. _No, not a crater_, she thought. It was a perfect hemispherical scoop removed from the ground. As far as she could tell, everything within that radius had simply winked out of existence. Chills ran down her spine as she realized the detonation had pulled her backward, back toward the epicenter of the blast, and that she had almost been caught in its wake. A thought came to her, bitterly, that it would have been easier if she had. But her work wasn't done. Sheldon was gone, and yet he still needed her.


	6. Chapter 6

Two days ago, Penny's life had been completely normal. Now, she was driving back to Pasadena to tell her friends that Sheldon was dead, with a head full of alien memories that she could never share. She didn't want to go back and didn't know how she could go on. She wasn't the same Penny anymore, and she understood with a sudden pang exactly what Sheldon had experienced, having to hide so much of himself from even his closest friends and his "adopted" family.

She reached 2311 North Robles all too soon, and climbed the stairs as if she were going to her own execution. She reached Leonard's apartment, and knocked. Raj opened the door, took one look at her face and started crying. Leonard and Bernie were suddenly by her side, hugging her. She shuddered at their touch.

"He's gone," she said needlessly. "It was... peaceful. He wasn't in a lot of pain."

Bernie made room for Amy, who clung to her and wept bitter tears down her neck. Raj and Howard embraced her, too, and then they stood looking awkwardly at each other.

"So, umm, are there arrangements that need to be made?" Leonard asked uncomfortably.

She shook her head. Sheldon had coached her how to answer this question. "No, he wanted to be cremated. They'll ship his remains to his mother." With a catch in her voice, she added, "I have to call Mary. She doesn't know yet. I... I need some time alone."

She left her friends to console each other in their grief. In her apartment, she took in her furniture, her things, looked exactly as she had left them, and felt a sudden intense loathing for everything there. She dialed Mrs. Cooper's number with shaking hands. Breaking the news to Sheldon's mother left her feeling raw and aching, the woman's anguish etching into her bones.

Some time later—possibly hours—there was a knock on her door. Leonard opened it and walked in without waiting for her response. "We're sort of having our own memorial service for Sheldon," he said awkwardly. "I thought you'd want to be there."

When she walked into the apartment of which Leonard was now the sole tenant, she saw all of Sheldon's friends standing solemnly in a loose circle in the living room. There was a bottle of single malt scotch on the coffee table, mismatched glasses and mugs besides it. Someone pressed a glass into her hands.

"I'll go first," Raj said into the stillness, cradling his mug in both hands. "Sheldon was a good friend to all of us. He didn't make friends easily, but once you were on his list, he would do anything for you. He saved me when I was going to be deported back to India, and..."

Penny let the memories, the stories, wash over her. The scotch burned all the way to her stomach every time she took a sip. When it was her turn, she struggled to find the right words.

"Sheldon was my best friend," she said slowly, ignoring the pained glare from Amy. "There were many parts of his life that he liked to keep private. There were only a few people that he trusted enough to call friends. With Sheldon, it was all or nothing. But for those of us who were his friends, we knew him as someone with a beautiful mind and a childlike innocence... and the world has no idea what it's lost today."

After the scotch was gone, the group began to drift apart. Leonard came over and hugged her. She tolerated it with barely concealed uneasiness.

"Do you want me to come over tonight?" he asked. "I don't want you to be alone."

With a sudden clarity, she knew exactly how Leonard wanted to comfort her. She felt nauseated. She shoved at his chest until she broke free of his confining embrace and rushed out of the apartment.

* * *

><p>In the weeks that followed, Penny's new logical side began to manifest itself in certain peculiar ways. Her apartment was always sparkling clean now, and a limited edition figurine of the Flash now had a place of honor among her Care Bears. She had stolen it, without feeling the least qualm, from the apartment across the hall. Some Saturdays, she would get up at six and eat a bowl of cereal while watching Doctor Who.<p>

She still couldn't tolerate Leonard's touch. He tried to be patient, tried to attribute the myriad changes he saw in her to grief. But the last straw had nothing to do with her sudden aversion to touch. It happened when she corrected an equation on the whiteboard in his apartment. For Leonard, the worst part was that there was no rational explanation for how she was correct, although he _had_ made an error when he copied it down from a reference chart. Worse, Penny couldn't explain how she knew the right answer. All she could say was, "It _felt_ wrong."

Leonard said they needed to take a break, that she just need time to get over losing Sheldon and get back to her old self. _That Penny is gone_, she thought, but didn't bother trying to explain. After a few weeks, when Raj convinced her to come over for pizza, there was a petite redhead sitting in Sheldon's spot and flirting with Leonard. Penny silently turned on her heel and walked out. No one came after her.

After seeing Leonard allow some tramp to take Sheldon's place, something broke loose inside of Penny. She was finally able to let go of her wistful memories of the past and the way things used to be. Instead, she threw herself into her work. At the Cheesecake Factory, her newly-applied effort doubled her tips. When she wasn't working, she spent hours doing research online, absorbing everything she could about how to become a successful actor. By the time she had saved up enough money to take another acting class, she had honed her skills to the point where she blew all the other students out of the water. Her acting coach was so impressed that he introduced her to some of his contacts. Mere months after Sheldon's death, Penny landed a recurring role in a cable series.

Soon after that, she moved into a nicer apartment, closer to the studio where she was filming. She saw the gang less and less now, but she really didn't mind. Ever since she had changed, since she had absorbed Sheldon's memories, she was different in a way that made them all uncomfortable around her. The new friends she made didn't mind that she was a little stand-offish, or that she was very particular about how her food was prepared, or that she occasionally spouted random trivia which she called "fun facts". And so Penny was able to reinvent herself, becoming a successful actress. Maybe she wasn't the star of top-grossing movies, but she did well enough to be choosy about which roles she accepted, and she wore a hat and sunglasses when she went out, to avoid being recognized. She became famous enough that years later, Leonard's children had a hard time believing that he'd ever been her friend, let alone dated her.

Penny never married. She had a string of relationships, most of them only lasting for a few months. Her former boyfriends usually accused her of being too self-sufficient or too self-centered. She never bothered to explain that she didn't feel the need for close relationships anymore. Every day, Sheldon was with her in spirit. She could hear his voice in her mind, and she dreamed of a vista she had never seen, rough black mountains jutting up into a green sky. In a sense, there were two people living in her head, two minds inside one body.

Once she could afford to have it done properly, Penny commissioned a painting of the landscape she saw in her mind's eye. She worked with the artist for months, trying to get it just right. She told the painter that the vivid and oddly-colored landscape came to her in a dream. It was close enough to the truth that it didn't feel like a lie. It was an eerie scene that no human could feel comfortable with, stark black and rust colored mountains thrusting up at weird angles, their sharp peaks piercing a sea-green sky. Puffs of lavender vegetation frothed at the base of the mountains, and orange cirrus clouds hung low in the sky. It was one of Sheldon's favorite memories, the view from the crèche where he was raised among dozens of his age-peers. On earth, he used to conjure it in his mind every night before he went to sleep, and now Penny liked to stare at it for hours as it hung in her bedroom in the secluded Beverly Hills manor she now called home. Sometimes it seemed ironic, that she, who had never been interested in space travel, now held the memories of dozens of alien worlds in her mind. It was one of the reasons that she had isolated herself from all of her former friends. She was afraid that she would accidentally blurt out something that only Sheldon would know, or worse, something no human should know.

She messed up only once after the time she corrected Leonard's equations. Sheldon was a secret that she kept so close to her heart that no one else could penetrate the walls she had erected around her innermost thoughts. Most people found her distant, aloof. She didn't care. There was a journalist that got under her defenses, or perhaps it was just because she was old now and tired. He had asked her what the turning point in her career had been: she had spent years living in Pasadena, not making any progress in her acting, and then suddenly, she became a success. Usually, Penny answered these kinds of questions with a vapid smile, claiming serendipity. For whatever reason, that day she told the reporter about a friend of hers named Dr. Sheldon Cooper. She talked about how his life had been cut brutally short, and how his death had compelled her to re-evaluate her own life. At first, she was appalled that she had mentioned Sheldon, but after further reflection, she was at peace with it. She wasn't famous enough that anyone would write a biography about her, and after all this time, she was one of only a handful of people alive who still remembered Sheldon.

She never mentioned his name in public again. When she died, her will stipulated that she be cremated and her most cherished possession, the alien landscape, be burned and mingled with her ashes. Her lawyer didn't even blink at the request. After years of dealing with eccentric and superstitious celebrities, that didn't even come close to being the strangest posthumous request that he had carried out.

Some months after Penny's death, a stooped elderly man with thick glasses and a mop of gray curls came to visit the memorial site where her remains had been interred. With gnarled hands that trembled slightly, he laid a bouquet of white roses on the plaque that bore her name. His son held his arm, supporting him, while his daughter laid a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

He cleared his throat, searching for the right thing to say in memory of the woman he had loved and lost. Finally, he turned to his children and began, "Let me tell you about the woman I once thought I would marry and about my best friend, the most brilliant man I ever met."


End file.
